The present invention relates to cooking foods with steam, in particular, vegetables and meats on a stovetop vessel. Vegetable steamers have traditionally been defined as an insert basket that is perforated and fits inside a cooking vessel above boiling water, and a lid is placed onto the cooking vessel which covers the insert basket holding food contents. Eventually, stovetop pressurized pots became popular, and most recently, countertop multi-cookers. Although the present invention is not in the realm of pressure and multi-cookers, it is pertinent to mention these latter two as there are a multitude of insert steaming baskets made for such devices which basically resemble wire mesh frying baskets.
Examples of prior insert steam baskets and other food steanling appliances are found in U.S. Pat. No. 2,667,117; 4,138,939; 4,316,447; 4,452,132; 4,920,251; 4,953,452; 8,960,081; and U.S. Pat. No. 9,572,362 to Millard ET AL, Feld, Foreman, Miller, Whitenack, Tarlow, Beard, and Difante, respectively. These devices and their cooking strategies have commonly inherited drawbacks that never fully accomplish the desired criteria that made steam cooking the favorable choice for cooked vegetables retaining the most nutritional value.
Therefore, it is pertinent to consider the commonly given reasons that made vegetable steaming popular; some of the nutrients are water soluble and leech away in boiling water, and nutrients deplete with high heat. Hence, the above methods for steaming vegetables and other foods have not really fled to far from high heat water boiling, as most pressure and multi cookers generate temperatures of 250-280 degrees of watery vapors, and these same high temperatures are commonly achieved with the stove top cooking vessels that use steaming insert baskets, and food nutrients are quickly being depleted. These high temperatures derive due to the fact that such devices commonly use a lid to control rapid evaporation, but usually with only one or two venting holes for the release of rising vapors, causing pressurization and high heat, and food is partially cooked through the process of convection that does not allow for the utilization of the natural laws of physics, consistent vapor rise, which is a more thorough and quicker cooking method that reduces nutritional depletion.
Another inherit problem with the above cooking methods is that the foods are cooked from the bottom upwards as the steam rises until hampered, due to the venting limitations, and an uneven process since the vegetables aren't able to be flipped, and the bottom portion of the food is overcooked before the top portion reaches desired tenderness, and another reason for excessively depleted nutrients. That at least half of the food cooked during such a process is overcooked is evident from the color of the water in the bottom of the vessel, it is the same color as the food that's overcooked. Food properly steamed will leave only a slight tint in the remaining water. Moreover, a steaming device advertising the versatility to cook meats, would allow for a hamburger pattie to be flipped, or turned upside down and allow even cooking on both sides of the pattie in traditional manner, and this option for even cooking should also be made available for vegetables. None of the above apparatuses allow for such even cooking.
One of the above mentioned patented devices claims to have steam needles to “brown the top of the foods,” but respectively, the drawback is that only the very top of the food is attended to in this manner and most of the food still faces an uneven cooking process. Of the just mentioned process, if the steam could reach every top portion of the foods, then this would mean that super pressurized heat would need to be generated to push the steam downwards, and such super temperatures would be counter-productive due to quicker nutritional loss.
Furthermore, overcooked portions of food occur because of the stove burner being used, as heat may be dis-proportionally dispensed at the bottom of the cooking vessel. Also, the vessel itself may be deformed or made of materials that dis-proportionally spread the heat, and this can be determined if some of the water bubbles are larger than the rest, and the entirety of the bubbles are uneven. These latter three factors contribute to uneven rise of heat vapors inside the vessel, and further overcook portions of the food, and again, further nutritional loss. There thus exists a need for a more even cooking method that also hastens the cooking process.